


To Life and Outliving

by chitopouf



Category: Dream Team - Fandom
Genre: Depression, M/M, Slow Romance, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29496462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chitopouf/pseuds/chitopouf
Summary: George is battling with depression and confusing feelings. Clay is retiring, but isn't sure about his decision. Nick is recently broken up and can't begin to move on. Why not put them in a house together?
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Kudos: 2





	To Life and Outliving

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that both Dream and George have expressed indifference towards DreamNotFound shipping fanfictions, and that comments made by the Dream Team as a whole have implied that Sapnap is comfortable with his presence in fanfiction.

_You can only get so famous._

George would remember those words. He would remember them, although they weren’t entirely inspiring to him. He and Clay shared few values past their morals, so the two often disagreed on the more philosophical topics that rose like bed-monsters at night: face reveals, compulsory voting, copyright, religion. Retirement. Retirement was the word of the day.

“To Dream!” Nick’s toast was bittersweet. No, that was wrong. The toast was genuine, and genuinely happy. George was bittersweet.

Still, he said, “To Dream,” and rose a glass of red to the camera. It warmed his stomach, but left a tangy aftertaste that settled and festered in his throat. He reminded himself not to buy the brand again.

 _You can only get so famous before the thrill dies out, and it just becomes…scary._ “I love you guys.” Clay hid behind his avatar, the only member of the call without a camera on. Taking another sip, George pinched his own thigh—just as Nick was not bittersweet, Clay was not hiding. _Don’t be rude_ , he told himself. _Not everything is about you._

Bits and pieces of an older conversation surfaced in his mind. Having talked to Clay earlier in the week, this party felt superficial to George. Or maybe, he wondered, he was just too drunk. So, he downed his glass and set it aside, eyes glazed over and thoughts lost to the past call.

_I’m satisfied._

“I’m fucking rich!” Clay said, and George slowly refocused. “Don’t hate me ‘cause I know when to leave a party.” Zak laughed, and it hurt George’s ears.

“I just don’t get it.” Bad’s voice was a little softer, and his mic was quieter. George appreciated that. “I don’t. You could go for years and nobody would try to stop you.”

Clay paused. “CaptainSparklez.”

“CaptainSparklez?”

“Yes. CaptainSparklez.” Faint clicking and tapping seeped through Clay’s microphone. “He has eleven million subscribers, and his last video was posted seven days ago. However…” Another pause, and the whir of a mouse wheel. “He only pulls about one hundred and fifty thousand views per video.”

“So,” George said, “you’re basing your life plan off of the failures of the ‘creeper, aw man’ guy?”

“Is that a failure? That’s still a lot of people,” Bad offered.

Clay clicked his tongue. “Yeah, but, think about it. In his heyday, he got a few million every video, at the _very_ least.”

“Maybe it is good that you’re retiring,” George said. “It can only go downhill from comparing yourself to CaptainSparklez.”

Luckily for George, the party only caught the sweet and ignored the bitter. The chuckles subsided and suddenly so did the party and before he knew it, George, aching and unfocused and finally out of autopilot, was in bed, squinting into his phone screen. He blinked and tried to remember the time, what the last half of the call had been like—why he could make out the silhouette of a bottle on his desk where he was sure there had only been a glass.

If any one of those memories existed in his head, it was overpowered by Clay’s voice, echoed from nights ago. _I’m satisfied_. And he’d meant it, too. George could hear his friend smiling then; he could imagine it, even. He pasted a grin onto the face of the mannequin man who lived in his head rent-free, an amalgamation of facial and bodily features that he must have seen on other people first, tossed in and sewn together to form the Frankenstein’s monster that he named Dream.

 _I’m satisfied_. “I’m not,” George had wanted to say, “I’m not, because how are we supposed to talk now? Our link was our channels and you’ve just cut the cable. How am I supposed to make small talk when all I do is play video games, and all you do is travel and explore and learn?” He screamed it all into the ears of the mannequin and thought that if he screamed hard enough, the damn thing might stop smiling. But it didn’t quite work, so he kept screaming until the very voice in his head was hoarse, and the only word left was, “Congratulations.” Then it turned its head and smiled harder, and he decided he’d rather cry in private.

His phone was dim as it could be, but it still stung George’s eyes as he tried to focus on the screen. A chain of texts—yes, it was a group chat. His, Clay’s, and Nick’s. Clay saying thank you, Nick wishing him well, and George, silent. Silent, save for one message, reading only, “Let’s do it.”

George scanned the conversation backwards. The text before was from Clay: “Try it, I dare you.”

Before that was Nick, “I’ll take her home with me.”

George continued backwards, from Clay to Nick and back again, himself not having said a thing.

“He’ll catch up, don’t worry. Ay George, you’ll get to meet Patches!!”

“Ya. Where’s Gogy gone?”

“Three losers in a tiny house, what could possibly go wrong?”

“YES PLEASE. Fuckin hyped now.”

George scrolled up, and up. The two had apparently been having this conversation for minutes on end, but there at the very beginning was a message from Clay:

“Come over. What do you say to April?”

And George, drunk and thoughtless, had said nearly five hours later, “Let’s do it.”


End file.
